The High Court case will claim that the US owner violated UK law by allowing access to users’ private information
Many users of the dating app Grindr may take the company to court, claiming that it shared extremely private information with advertising agencies, including their HIV status in certain situations.
The legal firm Austen Hays plans to bring a lawsuit in London’s High Court on Monday, claiming that the app’s US owner broke British data protection regulations.
According to the company, thousands of Grindr users in the UK had their information exploited. As of right now, 200 people have joined the claim, and the company claimed that “thousands” more have expressed interest in taking part.
Grindr declared that it would vigorously refute the allegation, claiming that it is founded on an inaccurate portrayal of previous guidelines.
The purpose of Grindr’s establishment in 2009 was to help gay guys hook up. With millions of users worldwide, it currently bills itself as the biggest dating app for gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people.
The High Court case against Grindr will revolve around the company’s alleged exchange of personal data with two advertising agencies. It will further assert that these businesses might have later sold the information to other businesses.
According to the law company, the Grindr lawsuit will concentrate on the timeframes before April 3, 2018, and between May 25, 2018, and April 7, 2020. This implies that more recent users are probably not going to be able to participate in the lawsuit. In April 2020, Grindr changed how its consent processes worked.
The Los Angeles-based Grindr announced in April 2018 that it would stop disclosing users’ HIV status to outside parties in response to a Norwegian researcher’s investigation revealing data sharing with two companies. For violating the General Data Protection Regulation, Grindr was fined 65 million Norwegian kroner (£4.8 million) in 2021, which is equal to 10% of the company’s worldwide sales. This decision was upheld by the nation’s privacy appeals board a year ago.
Grindr has filed an appeal in opposition to this ruling.
The claimed sharing of users’ HIV status was not directly addressed by Norway’s verdict. Rather, it concluded that, because users of Grindr were almost certainly members of the gay or bisexual community, revealing a user’s membership status alone constituted sensitive information.
The claim’s lead, Chaya Hanoomanjee, managing director of Austen Hays, said, “Our clients have suffered significant grief as a result of the unauthorised dissemination of their extremely sensitive and private information. As a result, a lot of people have felt anxious, embarrassed, and afraid.”
In addition to making sure that all of its users, wherever they may be in the world, are safe and don’t have to worry about their data being shared with outside parties when using the app, Grindr owes it to the LGBTQ+ community it supports to compensate those whose data was compromised and caused them distress.
The legal company did not offer any specifics, but it did say that it thought certain users would be entitled to considerable damages.
“We are committed to protecting our users’ data and adhering to all relevant data privacy regulations, including those in the UK,” a Grindr spokeswoman said.
We are proud of and take great pride in our global privacy programme. We plan a robust response to this allegation, which appears to be based on a fabrication of actions that took place more than four years ago, prior to early 2020.